Comments

As a Panthers fan, it doesn't seem that hard to figure out how the Panthers won. Peppers decided to play hard this week, and somebody trash-talked Steve Smith. Those two factors in combination are almost always good for a win.

As a Vikings fan, I was worried about Peppers and Smith going into the game. I never thought we'd see such a good performance from Matt Moore, though. Sure, most of his success came from Smith, but he was awfully mobile, and threw well on the move. That's a great way to avoid the Viking pass rush.

But even more astounding, how did Carolina's offensive line open up holes through Minnesota's D-line? Missing EJ Henderson hurts, and the secondary (except Winfield, but even he was off last night) are bad at tackling so I get the long runs, but getting through the trenches the way Sterwart did was very suprising.

One word - Kalil. He's turning into a hell of a C, and he was frequently winning (or at least stalemating) the 1-on-1 battle against whichever Williams lined up over him. NBC even highlighted a couple of his blocks. Not having to have always double-team Pat on runs makes a big difference.

Of course, Jasper Brinkley needs to stop trying to make Sportscenter KO tackles and remember to wrap up.

I don't think the article gives Moore enough credit. The author claims Moore played in nine games in 2007 but I would hardly call mopping up in a lopsided loss as playing. Looking at just his 3 starts is probably a more realistic measure and in those three starts, he did pretty good. In fact, I believe it was the game against Seattle were he was ranked in the top five in "Quick Reads". He wasn't that good agains the Cowboys but he did bounc back against the Bucs.

In the games he has started, the Panthers are 4-2. That's against Seattle, Dallas, TB, NE and the Vikings. They ALL had wining records at the time he played. His numbers might ot be fantastic, but the results are still pretty nice. They are at least good enough to give a Panther's fan a little hope.

I am not surprised by these figures, but I'm guessing that a team that is 11-2 (before the Carolina game) would usually have larger leads in the 4th quarter, and therefore would also be in the dreaded "prevent" defense at that time as well?

Any other quarter-by-quarter defensive comparisons for top tier teams?

That's in Premium, so I don't know if FO will provide those numbers unless they are moved to do some looking at conclusions which could be gleaned from those splits (and maybe they have before now). Hopefully they won't be mad if I point out that (without looking at 4th Q leads) IND's defensive DVOA rank from 1st quarter to last is 23-11-15-4, and NO's is 32-9-18-2.

Re Minny, isn't DVOA context-specific and wouldn't it account for the garbage time nature of late drives/scores? Anyway, despite those Minny quarter splits (ranked 7-8-19-30), they have the number 1 rank in "Late & Close: All plays in the second half or overtime with the score within 8 points." Will, have they been in a lot of those situations? I've been too busy hating on Favre to pay attention. ;)